NSA chief: Surveillance stopped 50 terror 'events'

McClatchey

Updated 7:39 am, Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The director of the National Security Agency testified Tuesday that the government's massive surveillance program helped thwart more than 50 terrorist "events" worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001, including a planned bombing of the New York Stock Exchange.

Alexander, along with representatives of the FBI, the Office of National Intelligence and the Justice Department, tried to quell public angst over the size and scope of the government's telephone and Internet surveillance activities following reports in Britain's Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post based on Snowden's leaks.

"This is not a program that's off the books, that's been hidden away," Deputy Attorney General James Cole told lawmakers. "It's been overseen by three branches of our government: the legislature, the judiciary and the executive branch."

Alexander told the committee that the programs were instrumental in preventing about 50 terrorist "events" in more than 20 countries, including 10 homeland-based threats.

The NSA director said he would provide House and Senate lawmakers detailed information on the 50 events in a classified setting. However, Sean Joyce, deputy director of the FBI, divulged some declassified information about two foiled plots.

Without going into great detail, Joyce said authorities were able to stop a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange before it fully hatched because federal authorities, through the surveillance programs, were monitoring "an extremist in Yemen" who was "talking with an individual located in the United States in Kansas City, Missouri."

In the second newly declassified plot, Joyce said federal authorities were able to identify a San Diego man who intended to financially support a terrorism group in Somalia.